The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

Summary

Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times bestseller: A “lush, tipsy, all-night mambo of a novel about Cuban musicians in strange places like New York City” (People).

Brothers Nestor and Cesar Camillo arrive from Cuba in 1949 with dreams of becoming famous mambo musicians. This memorable novel traces the arc of the two brothers’ lives—one charismatic and macho, the other soulful and sensitive—from Havana to New York, from East Coast clubs and dance halls to the heights of musical fame.

The basis for a popular film, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love “tells of the triumphs and tragedies that befall two men blessed with gigantic appetites and profoundly melancholic hearts. . . . Hijuelos has depicted a world as enchanting as that in Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera” (Publishers Weekly).

“Rich and provocative . . . a moving portrait of a man, his family, a community and a time.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

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The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love - Oscar Hijuelos

38

It was a Saturday afternoon on La Salle Street, years and years ago when I was a little kid, and around three o’clock Mrs. Shannon, the heavy Irish woman in her perpetually soup-stained dress, opened her back window and shouted out into the courtyard, Hey, Cesar, yoo-hoo, I think you’re on television, I swear it’s you! When I heard the opening strains of the I Love Lucy show I got excited because I knew she was referring to an item of eternity, that episode in which my dead father and my Uncle Cesar had appeared, playing Ricky Ricardo’s singing cousins fresh off the farm in Oriente Province, Cuba, and north in New York for an engagement at Ricky’s nightclub, the Tropicana.

This was close enough to the truth about their real lives—they were musicians and songwriters who had left Havana for New York in 1949, the year they formed the Mambo Kings, an orchestra that packed clubs, dance halls, and theaters around the East Coast—and, excitement of excitements, they even made a fabled journey in a flamingo-pink bus out to Sweet’s Ballroom in San Francisco, playing on an all-star mambo night, a beautiful night of glory, beyond death, beyond pain, beyond all stillness.

Desi Arnaz had caught their act one night in a supper club on the West Side, and because they had perhaps already known each other from Havana or Oriente Province, where Arnaz, like the brothers, was born, it was natural that he ask them to sing on his show. He liked one of their songs in particular, a romantic bolero written by them, Beautiful María of My Soul.

Some months later (I don’t know how many, I wasn’t five years old yet) they began to rehearse for the immortal appearance of my father on this show. For me, my father’s gentle rapping on Ricky Ricardo’s door has always been a call from the beyond, as in Dracula films, or films of the walking dead, in which spirits ooze out from behind tombstones and through the cracked windows and rotted floors of gloomy antique halls: Lucille Ball, the lovely redheaded actress and comedienne who played Ricky’s wife, was housecleaning when she heard the rapping of my father’s knuckles against that door.

I’m commmmmming, in her singsong voice.

Standing in her entrance, two men in white silk suits and butterfly-looking lace bow ties, black instrument cases by their side and black-brimmed white hats in their hands—my father, Nestor Castillo, thin and broad-shouldered, and Uncle Cesar, thickset and immense.

My uncle: Mrs. Ricardo? My name is Alfonso and this is my brother Manny…

And her face lights up and she says, Oh, yes, the fellows from Cuba. Ricky told me all about you.

Then, just like that, they’re sitting on the couch when Ricky Ricardo walks in and says something like Manny, Alfonso! Gee, it’s really swell that you fellas could make it up here from Havana for the show.

That’s when my father smiled. The first time I saw a rerun of this, I could remember other things about him—his lifting me up, his smell of cologne, his patting my head, his handing me a dime, his touching my face, his whistling, his taking me and my little sister, Leticia, for a walk in the park, and so many other moments happening in my thoughts simultaneously that it was like watching something momentous, say the Resurrection, as if Christ had stepped out of his sepulcher, flooding the world with light—what we were taught in the local church with the big red doors—because my father was now newly alive and could take off his hat and sit down on the couch in Ricky’s living room, resting his black instrument case on his lap. He could play the trumpet, move his head, blink his eyes, nod, walk across the room, and say Thank you when offered a cup of coffee. For me, the room was suddenly bursting with a silvery radiance. And now I knew that we could see it again. Mrs. Shannon had called out into the courtyard alerting my uncle: I was already in his apartment.

With my heart racing, I turned on the big black-and-white television set in his living room and tried to wake him. My uncle had fallen asleep in the kitchen—having worked really late the night before, some job in a Bronx social club, singing and playing the horn with a pickup group of musicians. He was snoring, his shirt was open, a few buttons had popped out on his belly. Between the delicate-looking index and middle fingers of his right hand, a Chesterfield cigarette burning down to the filter, that hand still holding a half glass of rye whiskey, which he used to drink like crazy because in recent years he had been suffering from bad dreams, saw apparitions, felt cursed, and, despite all the women he took to bed, found his life of bachelorhood solitary and wearisome. But I didn’t know this at the time, I thought he was sleeping because he had worked so hard the night before, singing and playing the trumpet for seven or eight hours. I’m talking about a wedding party in a crowded, smoke-filled room (with bolted-shut fire doors), lasting from nine at night to four, five o’clock in the morning, the band playing one-, two-hour sets. I thought he just needed the rest. How could I have known that he would come home and, in the name of unwinding, throw back a glass of rye, then a second, and then a third, and so on, until he’d plant his elbow on the table and use it to steady his chin, as he couldn’t hold his head up otherwise. But that day I ran into the kitchen to wake him up so that he could see the episode, too, shaking him gently and tugging at his elbow, which was a mistake, because it was as if I had pulled loose the support columns of a five-hundred-year-old church: he simply fell over and crashed to the floor.

A commercial was running on the television, and so, as I knew I wouldn’t have much time, I began to slap his face, pull on his burning red-hot ears, tugging on them until he finally opened one eye. In the act of focusing he apparently did not recognize me, because he asked, Nestor, what are you doing here?

It’s me, Uncle, it’s Eugenio.

I said this in a really earnest tone of voice, just like that kid who hangs out with Spencer Tracy in the movie of The Old Man and the Sea, really believing in my uncle and clinging on to his every word in life, his every touch like nourishment from a realm of great beauty, far beyond me, his heart. I tugged at him again, and he opened his eyes. This time he recognized me.

He said, You?

Yes, Uncle, get up! Please get up! You’re on television again. Come on.

One thing I have to say about my Uncle Cesar, there was very little he wouldn’t do for me in those days, and so he nodded, tried to push himself off the floor, got to his knees, had trouble balancing, and then fell backwards. His head must have hurt: his face was a wince of pain. Then he seemed to be sleeping again. From the living room came the voice of Ricky’s wife, plotting as usual with her neighbor Ethel Mertz about how to get a part on Ricky’s show at the Tropicana, and I knew that the brothers had already been to the apartment—that’s when Mrs. Shannon had called out into the courtyard—that in about five more minutes my father and uncle would be standing on the stage of the Tropicana, ready to perform that song again. Ricky would take hold of the microphone and say, Well, folks, and now I have a real treat for you. Ladies and gentlemen, Alfonso and Manny Reyes, let’s hear it! And soon my father and uncle would be standing side by side, living, breathing beings, for all the world to see, harmonizing in a duet of that canción.

As I shook my uncle, he opened his eyes and gave me his hand, hard and callused from his other job in those days, as superintendent, and he said, Eugenio, help me. Help me.

I tugged with all my strength, but it was hopeless. Still he tried: with great effort he made it to one knee, and then, with his hand braced on the floor, he started to push himself up again. As I gave him another tug, he began miraculously to rise. Then he pushed my hand away and said, I’ll be okay, kid.

With one hand on the table and the other on the steam pipe, he pulled himself to his feet. For a moment he towered over me, wobbling as if powerful winds were rushing through the apartment. Happily I led him down the hallway and into the living room, but he fell over again by the door—not fell over, but rushed forward as if the floor had abruptly tilted, as if he had been shot out of a cannon, and, wham, he hit the bookcase in the hall. He kept piles of records there, among them a number of the black and brittle 78s he had recorded with my father and their group, the Mambo Kings. These came crashing down, the bookcase’s glass doors jerking open, the records shooting out and spinning like flying saucers in the movies and splintering into pieces. Then the bookcase followed, slamming into the floor beside him: the songs "Bésame Mucho,Acércate Más,Juventud,Twilight in Havana,Mambo Nine,Mambo Number Eight,Mambo for a Hot Night, and their fine version of Beautiful María of My Soul"—all these were smashed up. This crash had a sobering effect on my uncle. Suddenly he got to one knee by himself, and then the other, stood, leaned against the wall, and shook his head.

"Bueno," he said.

He followed me into the living room, and plopped down on the couch behind me. I sat on a big stuffed chair that we’d hauled up out of the basement. He squinted at the screen, watching himself and his younger brother, whom, despite their troubles, he loved very much. He seemed to be dreaming.

Well, folks, Ricky Ricardo said, and now I have a real treat for you…

The two musicians in white silk suits and big butterfly-looking lace bow ties, marching toward the microphone, my uncle holding a guitar, my father a trumpet.

Thank you, thank you. And now a little number that we composed… And as Cesar started to strum the guitar and my father lifted his trumpet to his lips, playing the opening of Beautiful María of My Soul, a lovely, soaring melody line filling the room.

They were singing the song as it had been written—in Spanish. With the Ricky Ricardo Orchestra behind them, they came into a turnaround and began harmonizing a line that translates roughly into English as: What delicious pain love has brought to me in the form of a woman.

My father… He looked so alive!

Uncle!

Uncle Cesar had lit a cigarette and fallen asleep. His cigarette had slid out of his fingers and was now burning into the starched cuff of his white shirt. I put the cigarette out, and then my uncle, opening his eyes again, smiled. Eugenio, do me a favor. Get me a drink.

But, Uncle, don’t you want to watch the show?

He tried really hard to pay attention, to focus on it.

Look, it’s you and Poppy.

"Coño, sí…"

My father’s face with his horsey grin, arching eyebrows, big fleshy ears—a family trait—that slight look of pain, his quivering vocal cords, how beautiful it all seemed to me then…

And so I rushed into the kitchen and came back with a glass of rye whiskey, charging as fast as I could without spilling it. Ricky had joined the brothers onstage. He was definitely pleased with their performance and showed it because as the last note sounded he whipped up his hand and shouted "Olé!," a big lock of his thick black hair falling over his brows. Then they bowed and the audience applauded.

The show continued on its course. A few gags followed: a costumed bull with flowers wrapped around its horns came out dancing an Irish jig, its horn poking into Ricky’s bottom and so exasperating him that his eyes bugged out, he slapped his forehead and started speaking a-thousand-words-a-second Spanish. But at that point it made no difference to me, the miracle had passed, the resurrection of a man, Our Lord’s promise which I then believed, with its release from pain, release from the troubles of this world.

SIDE A

In the Hotel Splendour 1980

Nearly twenty-five years after he and his brother had appeared on the I Love Lucy show, Cesar Castillo suffered in the terrible heat of a summer’s night and poured himself another drink. He was in a room in the Hotel Splendour on 125th Street and Lenox Avenue, not far from the narrow stairway that led up to the recording studios of Orchestra Records, where his group, the Mambo Kings, made their fifteen black brittle 78s. In fact, it could have been the very room in which he had once bedded down a luscious and long-legged party girl by the name of Vanna Vane, Miss Mambo for the month of June 1954. Everything was different then: 125th Street was jumping with clubs, there was less violence, there were fewer beggars, more mutual respect between people; he could take a late-night stroll from the apartment on La Salle Street, head down Broadway, cut east on 110th Street to Central Park, and then walk along its twisting paths and across the little bridges over streams and rocks, enjoying the scent of the woods and nature’s beauty without a worry. He’d make his way to the Park Palace Ballroom on East 110th Street to hear Machito or Tito Puente, find musician friends at the bar, chase women, dance. Back then, you could walk through that park wearing your best clothes and a nice expensive watch without someone coming up behind you and pressing a knife against your neck. Man, those days were gone forever.

He laughed: he would have given anything to have the physical virtuosity now that he did when he was thirty-six and first brought Miss Mambo up those stairs and into the room. He used to live for that moment when he could strip a woman down on a bed: Miss Vanna Vane of Brooklyn, New York, had a mole just below the nipple of her right breast, and, boom, his big thing used to stick out just like that, just by touching a woman’s breast or standing close to her and sensing the heat between her legs. Women wore nicer clothes back then, more elaborate delicate things, and it was more fun to watch them undress. Yes, perhaps that was the room where he’d take Vanna Vane on those glorious unending nights of love so long ago.

He sat in the flickering street-lit window, his languorous heavy-jowled hound’s face glowing like white stone. He’d brought up a little phonograph, used to belong to his nephew Eugenio, and a package of old records made by his group, the Mambo Kings, in the early 1950s. A case of whiskey, a carton of cigarettes—filtered Chesterfields (Folks, smoke Chesterfields, the preferred tobacco, the Mambo King’s favorite!) that had wrecked his nice baritone voice over the years; and a few other items: paper, envelopes, a few BiC pens, his tattered address book, stomach pills, a dirty magazine—something called El Mundo Sexual—a few faded photographs, a change of clothes, all packed in a beaten-up cane suitcase. He was planning to stay in the Hotel Splendour for as long as it would take him to drink that whiskey (or until the veins on his legs burst), figuring he’d eat, if he had to, at the Chinese place on the corner with its sign saying, Takee Out Only.

As he leaned forward, placing on the buzzing phonograph a record called The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, he could hear footsteps on the stairway, a man’s and a young woman’s voice, the man saying, Here we are, baby, and then the sound of the door opening and closing, and the moving about of chairs, as if they were going to sit in front of a fan together to drink and kiss. Black man’s voice, Cesar figured before clicking on the record player.

A sea of scratches and a trumpet line, a habanera bass, a piano playing sentimental, sad minor chords, his brother Nestor Castillo in some faraway place in a world without light, raising the trumpet to his lips, eyes closed, face rippled by dreamy concentration… the melody of Ernesto Lecuona’s "Juventud."

Sipping whiskey, his memory scrambled like eggs. He was sixty-two. Time was becoming a joke. One day, young man; next day, old man. Now, as the music played, he half expected to open his eyes and find Miss Vanna Vane seated on that chair across the room, slipping her long legs into a pair of nylons, the cheery white light of 125th Street on a Sunday morning burning through the half-open window shade.

***

On one of those nights when he could not sit still in their apartment on La Salle Street back in 1954, he was in the Palm Nightclub listening to the fabulous Tito Rodríguez and his orchestra and watching the cigarette girl: she was wearing a too tight leopard-skin leotard and her blond hair was long, curled, and swept to one side, so that it fell pouty over half her face, like Veronica Lake’s. Every time this blonde walked by, Cesar Castillo bought a package of cigarettes from her, and when she would set her cigarette box down on the table he’d hold her by the wrist and look deep into her eyes. Then he’d give her a quarter tip and smile. In a sheeny black top, her breasts were splendid and large. He’d once overheard a drunken sailor saying to a pal in a bar, Look at the torpedoes on that broad, mamma mia! Loving American expressions, he thought of torpedoes with their pointed tips, and was enchanted by the line of sweat congealing across her diaphragm.

After he’d bought his eighth package of cigarettes from her, he invited her to have a drink. Because it was very late, she decided to sit with them, these two handsome brothers.

My name is Cesar Castillo, and this is my brother Nestor.

Vanna Vane. Nice to meet you.

A little later he was out on the dance floor with Miss Vane, putting on a hell of a show for the crowd, when the orchestra broke into a furious jam: a conga player, a bongo player, and a drummer with an American kit, pounding out a fast, swirling, circular rhythm. Their playing was so conducive to spinning that the Mambo King unfurled his breast-pocket handkerchief and in a variation of the scarf dance slipped one end of it between his teeth and urged Vanna to do the same with the other. Joined by a pink-and-light-blue handkerchief clenched between their teeth, Cesar and Vanna started to spin quickly like two whirling acrobats in a circus act. As they spun, the crowd applauded, and a number of couples imitated them on the dance floor. Then they dizzily zigzagged back to their table.

So you’re a Cuban fellow like that guy Desi Arnaz?

That’s right, baby.

Later, at three in the morning, he and Nestor walked her to the subway.

Vanna, there’s something I want you to do for me. I have this orchestra and we’ve just made a new record. We’re thinking of calling it something like ‘Mambos for the Manhattan Night,’ that’s my idea, and we need someone, a pretty girl like you—how old are you?

Twenty-two.

—a pretty girl to pose with us for the cover of this record. I mean to say—and then he seemed flustered and bashful—that you would be good for this. It pays fifty dollars.

Fifty.

Decked out in white silk suits on a Saturday afternoon, the brothers met Vanna in Times Square and walked over to the photographer’s studio at 548 West 48th Street, the Olympus Studio, where their photographer had outfitted a back room with fake palm trees. Turning up with their instruments, a trumpet, a guitar, and a drum, they looked quite slick, their thick heads of hair conked high into shining pompadours. Miss Vane wore a ruffle-skirted, pleat-waisted party dress with a tight bodice, gleamy black seamed nylons, and five-inch-high heels that lifted her rump into the air and showed off her nice long legs. (And behind this memory, he didn’t know what they called that muscle up at the high end inside a woman’s thigh, that muscle which intersected the clitoris and got all twisted, quivering ever so slightly when he’d kiss a woman there.) They tried a hundred poses, but the one that made the album cover was this: Cesar Castillo with wolfish grin, a conga drum strapped around his neck, his hand raised and coming down on the drum, his mouth open in a laugh, and his whole body bending toward Miss Vane. Her hands were clasped together by her face, her mouth forming an Ooooh of excitement, her legs bent for dancing, part of her garter showing; while to her left, Nestor, eyes closed and head tilted back, was blowing his trumpet. Later the artist who did the mechanicals for Orchestra Records would add a Manhattan skyline and a trail of one- and two-flagged notes spewing out of Nestor’s trumpet around them.

Because Orchestra Records worked on the cheap, most of their recordings were 78s, though they also managed to put out a few party-size 33s, with four songs per side. In those days, most record players still had three speeds. Pressed in the Bronx, these 78s were made of a heavy but brittle plastic, never sold more than a few thousand copies each, and were to be found in botánicas—religious knickknack shops—alongside statues of Jesus Christ and his tormented disciples, and magic candles and curative herbs, and in record stores like the Almacén Hernández on 113th Street and Lexington Avenue in Harlem, and in bins in the street market and on tables manned by friends at dances. The Mambo Kings would put out fifteen of these 78s, selling for 69 cents each, between 1949 and 1956, and three long-playing 33s (in 1954 and 1956).

The A and B sides of these 78s were titled Solitude of My Heart,A Woman’s Tears,Twilight in Havana,The Havana Mambo,Conga Cats and Conga Dolls,The Sadness of Love,Welcome to Mamboland,Jingle Bells Mambo! (Who’s that fat jolly guy with the white beard dancing up a storm with that chick?… Santa Claus, Santa Claus dancing the ‘Jingle Bells Mambo!’), Mambo Nocturne,The Subway Mambo,My Cuban Mambo,The Lovers’ Mambo, "El Campesino,Alcohol,Traffic Mambo,The Happy Mambo!,The New York Cha-cha-cha,Cuban Cha-cha,Too Many Women (and Not Enough Time!),Mambo Inferno!,Noche Caliente,Malagueña (as cha-cha-cha), Juventud,Solitude,Lovers’ Cha-cha-cha,How Delicious the Mambo!,Mambo Fiesta!,The Kissing Mambo! (And the 33s: Mambo Dance Party and Manhattan Mambo"—1954—and their full-length 33, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, June 1956.) Not only did the Mambo Kings feature winsome and beautiful Miss Mambo pinup girls on each of these records, but sometimes a dance instruction box was included. (By the mid-seventies, most of these records had vanished from the face of the earth. Whenever Cesar would go by a secondhand store or a classic record rack, he would search carefully for new copies to replace the ones that had gotten smashed or lent out or given away or just worn out and scratchy from so much use. Sometimes he found them for 15 cents or 25 cents and he would walk happily home, his bundle under his arm.)

Now the narrow entranceway of Orchestra, where those records were made, was blocked off with boards, its windows filled with the remnants of what had become a dress shop; a few manikins were leaning backwards against the glass. But back then he and the Mambo Kings used to carry their instruments up the narrow stairway, their enormous string bass always banging against the walls. Beyond a red door marked STUDIO was a small waiting room with an office desk and a row of black metal chairs. On the wall, a corkboard filled with photographs of the record company’s other musicians: a singer named Bobby Soxer Otero; a pianist, Cole Higgins; and beside him, the majestic Ornette Brothers. Then a photograph of the Mambo Kings all dressed in white silk suits and posed atop a seashell art-deco bandstand, the photograph crisscrossed with looping scrawls.

The studio was about the size of a large bathroom and had thickly carpeted floors with corkboard- and drape-covered walls, and a large window looking out on 125th Street. It was hot and airless on warm days, without air-conditioning or ventilation when they were recording, save for the rusty-bladed fan that sat atop the studio piano, which they’d turn on between numbers.

Three big RCA ball microphones in the center of the room for vocals, another three for the instruments. While making their records, the musicians would remove their shoes and walk quietly about, careful not to stomp their feet during the recording session, as this would get picked up as thumps on the microphones. No laughing, no breathing, no whispering. The horn players would stand to the side, the rhythm section—drummers and string bass and pianist—on another.

Cesar and his brother Nestor side by side, the Mambo King playing the claves (the wooden instruments making the 1-2-3/1-2 clicking sound) or shaking maracas, strumming a guitar. Sometimes Cesar played trumpet melodies with Nestor, but usually he stepped back and allowed his brother to take his solos in peace. Even so, Nestor always waited for his older brother’s signal, a nod, to begin. Only then, would Nestor step forward, his mournful solos flying like black angels through the group’s lavish orchestrations. With that, Cesar returned to the microphone or the pianist took his own solo or the chorus sang. Sometimes these sessions lasted until the early morning, with some songs coming easily, and others played again and again until throats grew hoarse and the streets seemed to blur in a phantasm of lights.

Like his music, the Mambo King was very direct in those days. He and Vanna had just been out to dinner at the Club Babalú and Cesar said to her, as she chewed on a piece of plantain fritter, Vanna, I’m in love with you, and I want the chance to show you what it’s like to be loved by a man like me. And because they’d been throwing down pitchers of the Club Babalú’s special sangria, and because he had taken her to a nice movie—Humphrey Bogart and Ava Gardner in The Barefoot Contessa—and because he had gotten her a fifty-dollar modeling fee and an expensive ballroom dress with pleated skirt so she could appear between himself and his younger brother on the cover of Manhattan Mambos ’54; and perhaps because he was a reasonably handsome man who seemed earnest and knew, as wolves know, exactly what he wanted from her—she could see it in his eyes—she was flattered enough that when he said, Why don’t we go uptown? she said, Yes.

Maybe it was on that chair that she had first set down her fine ass while going about the delicate business of hoisting up her skirt and unsnapping her garters. Coyly smiling as she rolled down her nylons, which she afterwards draped across the chair. He lay down across the bed. He’d taken off his jacket, his silk shirt, his flamingo-pink tie, stripped off his sleeveless T-shirt, so that his top was bare—save for a tarnished crucifix, a First Communion gift from his mother in Cuba, hanging from a thin gold chain around his neck. Off with the lights, off with her wire-reinforced Maidenform 36C brassiere, off with her Lady of Paris underwear with the flowery embroidered crotch. He told her exactly what to do. She undid his trousers and gripped his big thing with her long slender hand, and soon she was unrolling a heavy rubber prophylactic over it. She liked him, liked it, liked his manliness and his arrogance and the way he threw her around on the bed, turning her on her stomach and onto her back, hung her off the side of the bed, pumping her so wildly she felt as if she was being attacked by a beast of the forest. He licked the mole on her breast that she thought ugly with the tip of his tongue and called it beautiful. Then he pumped her so much he tore up the rubber and kept going even when he knew the rubber was torn; he kept going because it felt so good and she screamed, and felt as if she was breaking into pieces, and, boom, he had his orgasm and went floating through a wall-less room filled with flitting black nightingales.

Tell me that phrase again in Spanish. I like to hear it.

Te quiero.

Oh, it’s so beautiful, say it again.

"Te quiero, baby, baby."

"And I ‘te quiero,’ too."

Smugly, he showed her his pinga, as it was indelicately called in his youth. He was sitting on the bed in the Hotel Splendour, hidden by the shadows, while she was standing near the bathroom door. And just looking at her fine naked body, damp with sweat and happiness, made his big thing all hard again. That thing burning in the light of the window was thick and dark as a tree branch. In those days, it sprouted like a vine from between his legs, carried aloft by a powerful vein that precisely divided his body, and flourished upwards like the spreading top branches of a tree, or, he once thought while looking at a map of the United States, like the course of the Mississippi River and its tributaries.

Come over here, he told her.

On that night, as on many other nights, he pulled up the tangled sheets so that she could join him on the bed again. And soon Vanna Vane was grinding her damp bottom against his chest, belly, and mouth and strands of her dyed blond hair came slipping down between their lips as they kissed. Then she mounted him and rocked back and forth until things got all twisted and hot inside and both their hearts burst (pounding like conga drums) and they fell back exhausted, resting until they were ready for more, their lovemaking going around and around in the Mambo King’s head, like the melody of a song of love.

Thinking about Vanna threw open the door to that time. The Mambo King found himself walking arm in arm with her—or a woman like her—into the Park Palace Ballroom, a huge dance joint on 110th Street and Fifth Avenue. That was his favorite place to hang out on his nights off, when he wanted to have fun. It would feel good to make an entrance with a pretty woman on his arm, a tall blonde with a big heart-shaped ass: Vanna Vane, splendid in a bursting black sequin-disk-covered number that blinked and wobbled clamorously when she’d walk across a room. He’d strut in beside her, wearing a light blue pinstriped suit, white silk shirt, light sky-blue tie, his hair slick and his body scented with Old Spice, the mariner’s cologne.

That was the thing in those days: to be seen with a woman like Vanna was prestigious as a passport, a high-school diploma, a full-time job, a record contract, a 1951 DeSoto. Dark-skinned men like Nat King Cole and Miguelito Valdez would turn up at the dance halls with blond girlfriends. And Cesar liked to do the same, even though he was a white Cuban like Desi Arnaz. (Why, he knew of this fellow, hung around in the clubs, who made his brunette girlfriend dye her pubic hair blond. He knew it because he’d taken her to bed once, when she was still a brunette, and then later, on the sly, he’d talked her into going somewhere with him, maybe the Hotel Splendour, where he planted a kiss on her navel and slid her panties off, slipping his tongue into the sweetness of her new, improved golden Clairol hair.) Moving through the ballroom crowd, he liked to watch the heads turning in admiration as he and his girl would make their way to the jammed bar. There he’d play the sport and buy his friends drinks—in the 1950s, rum and Cokes were the rage—joking and telling stories until the orchestra broke into something like the Hong Kong Mambo or the Mambo de Paree and he would take his girl back out onto the floor and dance.

Later he might go into the cavernous Park Palace rest rooms to get his fancy two-toned shoes shined, or to place a bet with one of the bookies who worked out of a long stall where magazines and newspapers, condoms, flowers, and reefers were sold. A dollar tip for the shoeshine boys, a piss in the urinal, a comb through his wavy hair, and then out again, his metal-heeled shoes tap, tap, tapping down the tiled halls, like shoes in the arcades of Cuba, toward the beautiful music. Then he’d dance or rejoin his quiet brother at their table, sipping drinks and gratefully observing the juicy babes around him. (Yeah, and even if he’s in the Hotel Splendour, it’s as if he’s back in that dance hall again, checking things out and noticing that there’s a nice brunette looking over at him. And who should come by when his date gets up to use the ladies’ room but that brunette, and even if she’s not a blonde, she looks seriously fly in a tight pink dress and bops toward him with a drink in her hand, and Dios mío, but she looks hot from dancing, with beads of sweat rolling off her chin and onto her breasts, her stomach damp and transparent through the clingy material of her dress. And what does she say but, Aren’t you Cesar Castillo, the singer? And he nods and takes hold of her wrist and says, My, but you smell nice, and he gets her name, cracks her up with a joke, and then, before his date returns, he says, Why don’t you come back here tomorrow night and we can talk some more and have a little fun, and he jumps ahead, feeling her nipple stiffen in his mouth, and then he’s back in the Park Palace, watching her walking off—he can just barely make out the outline of her panties through her dress, and she’s in bed tormenting him with the ball of her thumb, a rolling motion over his opening that makes the head of his penis the size of a Cortland apple, and then his girl’s sitting beside him and they have some more drinks, he remembered that.)¹

The Mambo King flourished in that ballroom with its friendly crowds, good food, booze, companionship, and music. And when he wasn’t out to dance or to play jobs with his orchestra, he was visiting the friends he had made in the Park Palace and other dance halls, fellow Cubans or Puerto Ricans who would invite him over to their apartments to eat dinner, play cards, listen to records, and become a swaying ring of arms in the kitchen, singing and always having fun.

It was at the Park Palace that the Mambo King and his brother found many of their musicians. When he and his brother had first turned up in New York in early 1949, the beginning of the mambo boom, they had gotten jobs through their fat cousin Pablo, with whom they had at first lived, working in a meat-packing plant on 125th Street by day so that they could have enough money to party and set things up at night. They met a lot of people then, a lot of musicians like themselves, good players. There was Pito Pérez, who played the timbales; Benny Domingo on the congas; Ray Alcázar on the piano; Manny Domínguez, who played the guitar and the cencerro; Xavier from Puerto Rico, the trombone; Willie Carmen, the flute; Ramón "El Jamón" Ortiz, the bass saxophone; José Otero, violin; Rafael Guillón, the rattle gourd; Benny Chacón, accordion; Johnny Bing, saxophone; Johnny Cruz, horn; Francisco Martínez, vibraphone; Johnny Reyes, the tres and the eight-stringed quatro. And, among them, the brothers themselves: Cesar, who sang, played the trumpet, guitar, accordion, and piano; and Nestor, flute, trumpet, guitar, and vocals.

Like the brothers, many of the musicians were workers by day, and when they played jobs and were on a stage, or went out dancing, they were Stars for a Night. Stars of buying drinks, stars of friendly introductions, stars of female conquest. Some of them were already famous like the Mambo King wanted to be. They met the drummer Mongo Santamaría, who had an act back then called the Black Cuban Diamonds; Pérez Prado,² the emperor of the Mambo; the singer Graciela; Chico O’Farrill; and that black fellow who liked Cubans so much, Dizzy Gillespie. And they met the great Macedonio Rivera, a dignified and dapper-looking mulatto, who would hang out at the bar of the Park Palace, his wife by his side, receiving his fans and their occasional gifts of jewelry, which he would calmly tuck into his jacket pocket. Later the jewelry would end up in a teakwood Chinese box that Rivera kept in his living room. Visiting at his apartment in the West Eighties, the brothers would see this box, thick with engraved watches, bracelets, and rings, its lid decorated with Chinese swirls and inlaid with the image of a mother-of-pearl dragon devouring a flower. And Cesar would say, Don’t you worry, brother, that’s going to be happening to us one day.

Cesar had a picture from one of those nights, tucked in the soft cloth pocket of his suitcase in the Hotel Splendour: the two brothers decked out in white suits and seated at a round table, the mirrored walls and columns behind them reflecting the distant lights, dancers, and the brass of an orchestra. Cesar, a little drunk and pleased to death with himself, a champagne glass in one hand and, in the other, the soft, curvaceous shoulder of an unidentified girl—Paulita? Roxanne? Xiomara?—looking a lot like Rita Hayworth, with her nice breasts pushed up into the top of her dress and a funny smile because Cesar had just leaned over and kissed her, licking her ear with his tongue, and Nestor beside them, a little detached and to the side, staring off, his brows raised slightly in bewilderment.

***

Those were the days when they’d formed the Mambo Kings. It started with jam sessions that used to drive their landlady, Mrs. Shannon, and their other neighbors, mostly Irish and German people, crazy. Musicians they knew from the dance halls would come over to the apartment with their instruments and set up in the living room, which was often noisy with wacky saxophones, violins, drums, and basses that screeched, floated, banged, and bounced out into the courtyard and street, so that the neighbors slammed down their windows and threatened the Cubans with hammers. The casual jam sessions became regular sessions, certain musicians always showed up, and so one day Cesar simply said, Let’s make a little orchestra, huh?

His best find, though, was a certain Miguel Montoya, a pianist and good professional who knew the secrets of arranging. He was also Cuban and had been kicking around in different orchestras in New York City since the early 1930s and he was well connected, having played with Antonio Arcana and with Noro Morales. They’d see Montoya over at the Park Palace. Dressed in white from head to toe, he wore large, glittering sapphire rings, and sported an ivory crystal-tipped cane. Rumor had it that although he’d show up in the dance halls with a woman he was effeminate in character. One night they went to Montoya’s apartment on Riverside Drive and 155th Street for dinner. Everything in his home was white and fleecy—from the goatskins and plumes that hung on the walls to the statues of Santa Barbara and the Holy Mother that he’d draped in silk, to the furry love seats, sofas, and chairs. In the corner his white baby grand piano, a Steinway, on which he’d placed a thin-necked vase filled with tulips. They dined on delicate slices of veal which Miguel had cooked with lemon, butter, garlic, salt, and olive oil; scalloped potatoes; and a grand salad, which they washed down with one bottle of wine after the other. Later, as the Hudson gleamed silver in the moonlight and New Jersey blinked in the distance, they laughed, turned on the record player, and passed half the night dancing rumbas, mambos, and tangos. Cultivating Miguel through flirtation, Cesar treated him with real affection like a beloved uncle, constantly patting and hugging him. Later in the evening he asked Montoya if he could spare the time to sit in with their orchestra, and that night Montoya gave in and said he would.

They formed a mambo band; that is, a traditional Latin dance band given balls by saxophones and horns. This orchestra consisted of a flute, violin, piano, sax, two trumpets, two drummers, one playing an American kit and the other a battery of congas. Cesar had thought up the Mambo Kings while looking through the advertising pages of the Brooklyn Herald, where half the orchestras had names like the Mambo Devils, Romero and the Hot Rumba Orchestra, Mambo Pete and His Caribbean Crooners. There was a certain Eddie Reyes King of the Bronx Mambo, Juan Valentino and His Mad Mambo Rompers, Vic Caruso and His Little Italy Mambonairs, and groups like the Havana Casino Orchestra, the Havana Melody Band, the Havana Dance Orchestra. Those same pages advertising DANCING LESSONS NOW! LEARN THE MAMBO, THE FOX-TROT, THE RUMBA. DANCE YOUR WAY INTO A GIRL’S HEART! Why not Cesar Castillo and the Mambo Kings?

Although Cesar considered himself a singer, he was also quite talented as an instrumentalist and adept at percussion. He was blessed with tremendous energy, a surge of power from too many slaps in the face from his foul-tempered father, Pedro Castillo, and a love of melody because of his mother and the affectionate maid who had helped bring him into the world, Genebria. (Here he listens to a distant trumpeting on a Mambo King recording, Twilight in Havana, and sighs; it’s as if he’s a kid again running through the center of Las Piñas at carnival and the porches of the houses are lit with huge lanterns and the balconies garlanded with ribbons and tapers and flowers, and past so many musicians, musicians everywhere on the street corners, on the church steps, on the porches of the houses, and continuing on toward the plaza, where the big orchestra’s set up; that’s the trumpet he hears echoing in the arcades of his town as he passes the columns and the shadows of couples hidden behind them and charges down steps beyond a garden, through the crowds and the dancers, to the bandstand, where that trumpet player, obese in a white suit, head tilted back, blows his music into the sky, and this carries and bounces off the walls of another arcade in Havana, and Cesar’s blowing the trumpet now at three in the morning, reeling around in circles and laughing after a night out at the clubs and brothels with friends and his brother, laughing with the notes that whip into the empty dark spaces and bounce back, swirling inside him like youth.)

He and his brother actually preferred the slower ballads and boleros, but they set out with Montoya to build a sound dance band, because that’s what the people wanted. It was Montoya who did all the arrangements of pieces like "Tu Felicidad,Cachita,No Te Importe Saber, pieces made popular by the likes of René Touzet, Noro Morales, José Fajardo. He knew how to read music, which the brothers had never really learned—though they could struggle their way through a chart, they presented their songs with simple chords and with the melodies worked out on instruments or in their heads. This sometimes annoyed the other musicians, but Cesar used to tell them, What I’m interested in is a man who can really feel the music, instead of someone who can only play the charts." And then he talked about the immortal conguero Chano Pozo, who was shot to death in 1948 over a drug deal³ and whose ghost was already turning up in Havana mambos, and of musicians like the great Mongo Santamaría. Just look at Mongo, Cesar would say to Nestor. "He doesn’t read. And did Chano? No, hombre, he had the spirit, and that’s what we want, too."

They’d rehearse in the living room of their cousin Pablo’s apartment, on days when the walls were subject to wild fits of clanking boiler pipes and when the floors rumbled because of the subways, as if in an earthquake. They’d rehearse on days when the boiler had shut down and it was so cold steam oozed out of their cuticles and the musicians would roll their eyes, saying, Who needs this shit? But

Reviews

Oscar Hijuelos won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. It is a is a wonderful period piece of the early 1950's, where night clubs had dance contests, men wore zoot suits, and women hoped that all the lace and garter belts and perfume would help them find the man to take care of them. "Everything was different back when; 125th Street was jumping with clubs, there was less violence, there were fewer beggars; more mutual respect between people,” In 1949 Cesar and his younger brother leave Cuba and hit New York City to play their music and try to make it big like Tino Fuentes and their role model Desi Arnez. When in fact Desi happens to hear them play one night , he invites them to his house and to appear on his show. This helps propel the Mambo Kings to some degree of fame and the rerun of the appearance, when Cesar is 62 is the start of the narrative. "Between the delicate-looking index and middle fingers of his right hand, a Chesterfield cigarette burning down to the filter, that hand still holding a half glass of rye whiskey, which he used to drink like crazy because in recent years he had been suffering from bad dreams, saw apparitions, felt cursed, and, despite all the women he took to bed, found his life of bachelorhood solitary and wearisome."Hijuelos' portraits of the brothers are wonderfully drawn. Cesar Castillo, the guitar strumming womanizer whose voice and gregarious personality help the band become a big hit, and Nester, the trumpet playing tortured artist who writes 22 versions of the song Maria of my Soul. He is haunted by a lost love, even though he meets and marries Delores. "Beautiful María of My Soul.” A song about love so far away it hurts; a song about lost pleasures, a song about youth, a song about love so elusive a man can never know where he stands; a song about wanting a woman so much death does not frighten you, a song about wanting that woman even when she has abandoned you."Their story is told in reflection as the older, overweight Cesar sits in his hotel room reminiscing about the good old days and the many women he has loved. I recommend going to YouTube and listening to the haunting Beautiful Maria of my Soul, letting that melody be the background as you embrace the adventures of these two very different brothers. Though I would caution that the lovemaking tales of Cesar are not for the easily offended, the writing does remind me of that of Junot Diaz who I am sure would acknowledge Hijuelos as a muse. After all Diaz did name his favorite character Oscar.

This is one of those breathless books. The kind that speaks in clauses. And sometimes phrases. And includes sentences with lots of commas, as when you list the parts of speech like noun, verb, adverb, adjective, and pronoun. It is the kind of book that makes me dizzy.I bought this book a long time ago because I knew it was a Pulitzer Prize winner. It sat on my shelf for awhile, but I picked it up recently after receiving "Beautiful Maria of My Soul" as an Early Reviewer. My immediate reaction after the first 50 pages or so was that I rereading "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao." It had that same stream of conciousness kind of feeling to it. That same dizziness. Eventually, though, Mambo Kings grew on me. I think the thing that made it work better than Oscar Wao was the whole setting. An old man, Cesar Castillo, is sitting in the Hotel Splendour, listening to one of his old records and thinking back on his life. The stories he remembers are in no particular order and while that may be hard for the reader to grasp early on, it is true of the way most of us reminisce. One thing leads to another but often not chronologically.The stories are infused with lots of sex and lots of music--two things that define most of Cesar's life. Sometimes it can seem a bit much to the reader, but then again it seems true to the character of Cesar. Those two things WERE just about all he thought about, so any night thinking back on his life would necessarily revolve around them.Mambo Kings wasn't my favorite book, but it's one I'll remember for awhile. It stretched me as a reader and brought me out of my comfort zone, which is a good thing. I'm anxious to begin "Beautiful Maria" now. I am curious to know if Hijuelos uses the same device to tell the story or goes for a more traditional narrative.

I can see why this book won the Pulitzer Prize but it also was disturbing to me (although there was a reason for the disturbing parts). The macho Cuban point of view just isn't something I can relate to. This book was like looking at a piece of art by Maplethorpe. It's not pleasant but it has an effect on you. I will definitely read other titles by this author. It is an amazing snapshot of the Cuban immigrant experience of that particular time period. I wonder what Cubans feel about it's authenticity.

While there is some comedic relief in this book, it is saturated with tragedy. True to life perhaps in many aspects, it is also riddled with a compelling sensuousness. Beginning and ending with brief first-person background, it tells the history of two Cuban brothers who try to forge musical lives for themselves in New York City. Along the way they encounter famous people (including Desi Arnaz) and struggle to provide for their families. Music redeems them and helps them transcend the mundane.

"Beautiful Maria of My Soul. A song about love so far away it hurts; a song about lost pleasures, a song about youth, a song about love so elusive a man can never know where he stands; a song about wanting a woman so much death does not frighten you, a song about wanting that woman even when she has abandoned you." Oscar Hijuelos's novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love is a beautifully written historical novel about Cesar Castillo, who comes to New York City from Cuba in 1949 with his younger brother Nestor with the dream of becoming successful musicians. For a short period of their tumultuous lives, this dream does come true. At the end of his life in 1980, Cesar has deliberately ensconced himself in The Hotel Splendour, to die alone. This is his story, told in flashback. As the reader will surmise immediately, Cesar Castillo never became rich, never lived an easy life, and the excessiveness of his lifestyle--the constant drinking, the lack of sleep, the womanizing--are there to drown out Cesar's deep-seated emotional problems and unhappiness. Cesar is the brother who is always able to hide this melancholy from himself and others, yet when the withdrawn, taciturn Nestor dies, his defenses crumble. It is as if Nestor bequeathed his depression to his older brother, to carry along with the self-destructive habits that were already there. Cesar Castillo is a richly drawn character who has his good-natured, generous A side, along with his dastardly B side. He is crippled by the need to be macho, but there is a love-starved, abused boy that is still crying out for help. And so, at the end of his life, there are people he has hurt as well as people who will remember him fondly and gratefully forever. Oscar Hijuelos made every character's pain throb on the page, but this is not a hard book to read. He made Cesar's alcoholism painful and his sexual urges unbearable. The author also brings a time period and culture back to life in this story. I enjoyed the book very much! Mambo Kings Sing Songs of Love won the Pulitizer Prize in 1990.

Cesar Castillo, the Mambo King himself, is an old man, and is remembering his life (and loves) in Cuba and New York as he approaches death. In the middle of the book is a quote that perfectly describes Cesar’s life: “Me siento contento cuando sufro,” he sang one day, “I feel happy when I’m suffering.” Cesar and his younger brother Nestor arrive in New York full of ambition and desire to be musicians. They are talented and willing to work hard, and with some luck, put together an orchestra (The Mambo Kings), riding the popularity of the mambo craze of the late 1940s. They even get a guest appearance on “I Love Lucy” after Desi Arnaz catches their nightclub act one evening. The appearance gives them a measure of celebrity and helps them to sell several records. But true fame is just beyond their reach. Nestor is an incredibly talented trumpet player and songwriter, but he suffers from unrequited love for the woman who left him when he still lived in Cuba. He marries Delores and starts a family, but still pines for the “Beautiful Maria of My Soul” of whom he sings. His deep melancholy ends only when the car he is driving skids off the road in a snowstorm, killing him. Cesar has always been the driving force for the Mambo Kings – a handsome, suave, baritone who charms the audience and spreads his favors among the many women he “loves.” He’s generous to a fault, freely bestowing gifts and money on those he befriends, as well as supporting his family members still in Cuba. But after Nestor dies, he simply cannot continue to be the leader he once was. He descends into a depression that begins slowly to eat at him, fueled by drinking and excess. It is a melancholy story, but lyrically told and impassioned. Cesar’s reflections on his life give us a moving portrait of the man, his community and the times. Hijuelos writing is evocative and moving; the book leaves my heart aching for Cesar and Nestor.

Oscar Hijuelos’ 1988 novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love is understandably a critically acclaimed and award-winning work of breadth and depth; of passion, compassion and empathy; and of growth and maturing. Mambo Kings follows its characters through the multiple, interwoven arcs of their lives, with “cameo appearances” crafted from, and in tune with, those characters’ time and place. Within the context of its Cuban-American ethnicity – of whole families and friends moving to the U.S. for better lives, or to escape (or avoid) Castro’s Cuba, trying to build new “American Dream” lives together in a strange land – Mambo Kings reaches far and accomplishes much of its aim. Yet Mambo Kings also manages to develop each of its principal characters in individual portraits, each with his or her own hopes and dreams, and sadness, disappointments or regrets. The novel’s framework of flashbacks and recollections of one character lends coherence to the whole, with strong flavors of Cesar Castillo’s exuberant youth and melancholy old age.

Beautiful Maria of My Soul is Hijuelos’ 2010 follow-up to Mambo Kings, which ultimately succeeds in its own right, albeit with a very different framework and focus. In developing “the rest of the story,” Beautiful Maria tells of much the same communities, the same historic context, even some of the same characters. The later novel’s scope, however, is considerably smaller: where Mambo Kings gives us breadth and depth, in sweeping arcs, flashbacks and recall, Beautiful Maria offers a slow, steady progression of time and events, full of the hopes and fears, and recurring losses, worries and griefs, of a simple – at times, even shallow – country girl, making what she can of her life with limited resources and fewer prospects. In some ways, Maria’s path seems pedestrian or predictable; but therein lies a truth born of her story's realism. Despite the aura of mystery surrounding her in Mambo Kings, and her compelling presence (even in absence) throughout that earlier work, the Maria of Beautiful Maria is no Cinderella. Any reader who approaches her story with false expectations of more Mambo Kings will likely be disappointed.

These novels are bookends of sorts, each standing on its own, but each also inevitably, inherently and inextricably connected to the other, just as Maria’s and Nestor’s love and fates are intertwined. Between them, Hijuelos has given us not one, but two novels, which – for all their similarities and differences – together offer divergent, yet complimentary views of a larger tale.

And the final, post-modern twist at the end of Beautiful Maria (no spoilers!) ultimately has a feeling of fun, a light-hearted bonus or lagniappe, like dessert at the end of a feast.

I read this book when it first came out and loved it. After the follow-up book, Beautiful Maria of My Soul became available, I decided I need to read it again. I still love it.The story of two Cuban brothers who immigrate to New York in the '50's to pursue their musical dreams, The Mambo Kings Play Song of Love really captures the flavor of its time and of its music. The language and imagery are rich and evocative of black beans and rice, platanos, cigarette smoke, and music spilling out into the street. I especially loved the descriptions of the brothers, silhouetted in their windows playing and composing music (much to the dismay of their sleeping neighbors) - this is classic imagery, reminding me of photos of musicians from the time.Mambo Kings is earthy and sensual - its mood hectic and vibrant - and offers us a glimpse into another time and culture (and isn't that what the best books do?).

When I first read this book, I was blown away by the writing. Hijuelos is a master of description; the scents, sounds, and scenes are as vivid as any I have read. The portrayal of a simple man, Cesar, shows how complex we all really are.However, I must say after the second reading, I was somewhat turned off by the sex and I didn't like Cesar nearly as well. I'm not sure what made the difference (it was probably a year between readings). Still Hijuelos is a fantastic writer; I just like some of his other works better.